The stars were paling; on the horizon were the first vague
hints of dawn. He gazed at the faint gray curtain with interest. It
was a dawn he had not expected to see, he told himself.
Then, as he looked, a shape arose before his eye out of the gloom. Dan
watched it with dumb fascination. Suddenly a realizing sense of the
nature of the apparition shot through his mind. A vessel--God! Dan's
voice raised in a long, hoarse cry for assistance. But there was no
answer. Yet the craft was bearing toward them, not a hundred yards
away, silently as a ship of the dead. Dan cried again, rising on his
rolling perch. But the hail died on his lips. He could see now. It
_was_ a ship of the dead. It was the derelict they had viewed from the
fancied security of the _Tampico's_ deck, a few short hours before. An
imprecation trembled upon Dan's lips. For the last half-hour Virginia,
who had crawled to a kneeling posture, had been watching Dan with
unlighted eyes. Now as he turned to her and pointed at the slowly
advancing vessel, she nodded slowly, as though comprehending his
meaning, and stretched out her arms to him.
Softly, quietly the bow of the hulk slid up and nuzzled gently among
the wreckage. Quickly Dan secured the litter to the bow by twisting a
length of wire cable through the rusty green fore-chains of the
derelict.
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